Noise around shorter work weeks isn’t new. While pre-covid pitches and pilot programs hoist benefits without affecting productivity or profitability, nothing has yet been widely adopted. That’s especially true in trades — industries that face their own unique operational challenges. But according to Joe O’Connor, a new piece to the puzzle could give it more traction: Artificial Intelligence.
For years, O’Connor has been a pioneer and advocate for work-time reduction models. He leads the company Work Time Revolution — partnering with hundreds of organizations to implement innovative work models and schedules. He's also the co-author of an upcoming book alongside journalist Jared Lindzon: Do More in Four: Why It’s Time for a Shorter Workweek.
While for many, the five-day, nine-to-five grind may feel deeply embedded in work culture, it hasn’t actually been around for that long.
Since the industrial revolution, work hours were on a steady decline, with a steeper drop catalyzed by the work crises during the Great Depression. By the 1950’s, President Nixon saw a four-day work week in the “not too distant future” — saying the shift was not simply "dreams or idle boasts.”
70-some years later, a four day work week remains an uncommon luxury. Yet, while momentum slowed for much of the latter half of the 1900s, advancements in technology, telecommunications and a global pandemic have colored a very different work landscape today.
Throw in AI, a technology poised to more drastically alter labor than even the industrial revolution, and an extra day off doesn’t seem so outlandish — certainly not to O’Connor.
But a lot of AI hype isn’t around less work — it’s fear of no work.
In an interview with Broadband Nation, O’Connor explained this is where he’s having daily conversations with business leaders about adopting “AI in a way that shares the benefits with the workforce, so that they're more engaged in the process, they're more bought in, they're more likely to really want to embrace this technology.”
The key difference is allowing employees to “actually be an active participant in redesigning and reimagining what their jobs could become, rather than completely overwhelmed with anxiety about what might be taken away,” O’Connor continued.
Of course, what redesigning and reimagining looks like varies — as AI’s adoption will play out unevenly across industries. Trades and field work like broadband face both constraints and opportunities unique to their structure.
Can the trades make the change?
One thing that is clear: the road to a four-day work week is unequal — just as it was to adopt five. Some schedules easily slide to the left while others face bigger challenges.
Trade and construction industries may not seem apt to adapt to such a transformation, with blue-collar sectors facing more barriers to technological innovation. But the shift-based scheduling structure can actually adopt flexible work models more easily than the salaried nine to five, according to O’Connor.
"If you run an organization where you already have a shift-based, roster-based, schedule-based system in place, then to some extent, you are already having to be more creative and collaborative about how you design your systems and scheduling than a company that's working a traditional nine to five,” he detailed. “That's often an overlooked dimension.”
But beyond scheduling, large-scale changes in the trades and construction face other challenges — from fragmentation to irregular travel rotations. Some trade sectors also struggle with ‘permatemp': being employed through temporary staffing (such as subcontractors) while effectively doing the same work as a full-time employee without the same benefits or job protections.
While O’Connor does believe white-collar industries will “see the biggest momentum earliest,” there are still strong motives for adopting new models.
O'Connor recalled one heavily unionized organization working with his company that had implemented an experimental pay structure: all overtime — from weekend to evening work — was already bought out by the employer. In other words, the time was pre-paid, but employees only actually worked the hours if they hadn't met output expectations.
Functionally, it offers the same kind of benefits as a four-day work week — pay up front, but working only what's needed.
“It was just night and day better” compared to extra compensation tied exclusively to time, said O’Connor. Trades may be more amenable to this type of work-time reduction — where output still takes precedent over time.
Shifting skills in a 'future proof' trade
“AI is going to take on so much of the volume of certain tasks and processes that we're accustomed to humans doing that it is actually going to be more important to say: How do we actually lock in the human workforce, being as effective as they possibly can be on the highest value, highest priority work," O'Connor claimed.
This has already begun in broadband trades like premise technician work, where AI tools are simplifying reporting, mapping Wi-Fi coverage — allowing the technicians to hone in more on the active problem solving and working with home or business owners.
From O’Connor’s perspective, these types of advancements are good predictors for what skills will become important in the era of AI — even in physical, technical roles like broadband tech work.
He explained that while trades and technical industries might be “better protected in the short to medium term than some aspects of knowledge work,” those same roles will still require knowledge-work competencies as automation and AI move in.
“If your role moves from being purely one that's based on efficiency and task completion to actually working alongside agentic systems and robots, then you're going to require a lot more of those types of softer skills to thrive and survive in that environment than maybe was the case previously,” he said.
He believes that shift points to a very different skill set for the workforce of the future.
“My advice simply would be: anyone that's in these more technical professions is going to have to reckon with the fact that the competitive differentiator in the future will be... these softer skills in terms of collaborative problem solving, decision making, [the] ability to think creatively and make good judgments about problems,” concluded O’Connor.
Interested in exploring job opportunities within the industry? Check out Learning Alliance, and Broadband Nation's jobs board, training portal and Learning Center.